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Friday, June 28, 2013

For anyone who doesn't know, the U.S. Supreme Court has been busy this week. Several of their rulings have implications, but the case most resonant for The Discreet Traveler is United States v. Windsor. Edith Windsor was married in Toronto, Ontario, and her marriage was recognized by the state she and her spouse lived in, but not by the United States.

The Court overturned a key section of the hateful and, they've finally confirmed, unconstitutional "Defense of Marriage" Act, clearing the way for Americans' marriages to be recognized by the federal government. For the first time, there is a way for U.S. citizens to live lawfully with their spouses in America, even if they are both gay and foreign!

I've been mulling over my reaction to this victory, which has taken so terribly long. "Couples forced into exile will be coming home soon," reads Immigration Equality's Web site. That is, couples who ever had the option to live together at all, before this decision. It is wonderful that Americans finally have this choice.

But am I going to go "home" from "exile"? The U.S.A. feels like a young love I broke up with thirteen years ago, who's come back to say she's changed. I'm happy to hear it; I wish all the best to her and whomever she lives with in the future. It would be weird to move back in together, though. Right?

My reaction has been to feel, about my native country, a way I haven't felt in a very long time. Proud. Oh, I know that everyone who hated gays on Tuesday still hated us Wednesday, when the Court ruled. And on a larger scale, I know that many things are still very wrong with the U.S.A. Given domestic surveillance and terrorist policies abroad*, there are ways we are still stuck in the Reagan era--or the Eisenhower.

But when I heard the Gay Men's Chorus of Washington, D.C. sing "The Star-Spangled Banner" outside the Supreme Court, I felt good about it. Not just because the singing was fantastic. I felt proud of a national anthem that isn't even my favorite patriotic song. Because, for the first time, I heard gay Americans singing "the land of the free" as if it applied to them. As if it was, not a reality that has been accomplished for everyone (see *), but an ideal worth aspiring to. The way an American should feel.

Tomorrow, I'll march with the first contingent of Democrats Abroad UK to participate in a Pride parade in London. The theme, funnily enough, is marriage, since England and Wales are kinda-sorta-maybe-soon getting same-sex marriage, which we've not been allowed before. Everyone will be talking about the changes in the States, of course, and we'll have American flags.

I’ve heard the American flag booed at Pride marches before, which I don’t agree with. But then, I’ve been booed for other reasons. Pride isn’t only a celebration; historically it is a protest for our rights. Rights that nobody was ever going to allow us to exercise without a fight. Every freedom we have now is only ours because we fought for it then.

This will be the first Pride I’ve marched in London since 1994. British gays were far from equal nineteen years ago. I was with the Stonewall Immigration Group, working to get any kind of discretion at all for the partners of British citizens. Actual legal recognition was beyond our dreams.

That same year, a telex (!) was sent to all Canadian immigration officers instructing them to recognize same-sex partners for immigration purposes. It took me six more years but I finally became an independent immigrant to Canada.

I’ve said in the past that homophobic U.S. laws have made the most practical difference in my adult life, but now I see that that is wrong. The overturning of those laws makes no practical difference in my life. What changed my life, and for the better, was the wheel turning positively in other countries. Canada led the way in 1994. Even ten years ago, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence v. Texas, Canada had marriage. Real, coast-to-coast-to-coast, equal marriage, while the states were only just decriminalizing homosexuality. I’ve moved on, but I know how many Americans and their families feel, because I remember feeling it.

So this week, as I do every year, I’ll celebrate three holidays. My High Holy Days. Today is the anniversary of the Stonewall rebellion, so of course it is Pride. And the Fourth of July has special resonance this year, as Americans celebrate their independence.

In between is Canada Day. Which I, as a Canadian, celebrate too. Because Canada became my home and showed us a way, when there was no way.

Saturday, June 22, 2013

From the past and Deep Things, I revert to something more contemporary and lighthearted. Both my mom and the great Cheri Crystal have, on separate occasions, spoken of writing the trials of a North American traveler in search of what Canadians call washrooms.

Before I go on, I'll address the question of whether it is appropriate to write about "loos" at all. The human need to eliminate is not really something we want to read or talk about. Yet it is a necessary part of life, at least as much as food or sex. Based on a lot of what gets published or posted nowadays, people want to read endlessly about the human body in other positions. Without going into gory details, may I just point out that in the absence of a toilet, the Westerner accustomed to such gets gradually uncomfortable. Given long enough discomfort, it becomes difficult to focus on anything else--the sights of Berlin or the scintillating conversation of one's fellow travelers.

Erma Bombeck, the American humorist, once wrote a column on the subject of European pay toilets: "Your kidneys are destroyed for a lousy dime!" The fact is, women, and in particular North American women, are up a certain creek when traveling on this side of the Atlantic Ocean. Europeans, it seems, do not require toilets, or do not require them very often, so it doesn't occur to them to make them available to other people except for a fee. Heaven help you if you don't have 30 p and, well, have to.

I say "women" because men, not to cast aspersions on any of them individually, don't seem to require toilets at all. I base this observation both on the fact that I have never seen a line for the men's room in any country in the world (have you?) but also on the equation of any convenient public place, like the stairs to my local train station, with a urinal. It's not nice for the rest of us, but sometimes I envy those guys.

Because it is not enough for a woman finally to find a washroom, and scrape up the money to pay for it. She then has to stand in a "queue" while the lucky woman who got there first, and is currently occupying the toilet, crimps her eyelashes, finishes the book she was reading, and blow drys her hair. Public toilets are generally so disgusting that I, personally, would never spend a second inside that I didn't have to, but I find I'm alone in this preference. All a woman has to do is get in the bathroom ahead of other women and it's screw you, sister, I'm in this for myself. Time to count every coin in my purse in case of another toilet somewhere else!

There are, of course, exceptions. There are bathrooms so nice you don't have to hold your breath while you wash your hands, like most of the ones on board the ship we were on recently. All credit for these go to the cleaners, and I really mean this, because I worked as a cleaner once. People in general leave public bathrooms in a state that defies belief--unless you, too, have had the misfortune to work as a cleaner, you would not believe it either. It's a common human failing not to give a stuff about the mess we leave behind unless we are the ones who have to clean it up. See pollution, etc.

The one good thing about being in desperate enough need is that you don't really care what state the bathroom is in. Just get in, get out, move on. We were in Padua, Italy, and most of the people traveling with us were spending their entire free time standing in a line at the cathedral of St. Anthony--the toilet line, not the line to view the saint's tomb or receive communion. I made a mad dash to a café to buy a bottle of water, which would have continued the cycle of needing the bathroom had it not been so dehydrating outdoors, and then found the ladies' room. (Despite my somewhat butch appearance, this was a perfectly safe thing to do on the continent. I've never been confronted as a dangerous male at the door of a ladies' room outside Anglo-America--but that's another column.)

There was no line. I was greatly relieved, no less so upon my discovery that this toilet was a Turkish-style hole in the floor. It helps to have learned (from years in the public schools) never to sit down.

I could not suppress a smug smile when I, very rapidly, emerged to find a small cluster of women behind me, all totally flummoxed about what to do. They gave up and did not form a line.

Oh yeah. Always, wherever you go in the world, always carry tissues with you. And small change. Someday you'll thank me for this.

In September I am trekking Mount Kilimanjaro for Oxfam.

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About Me

Walking the line between discretion and paranoia, I am always writing and travel as much as I can. My first novel, Arusha, was a Lambda Literary Award Finalist. My second novel is The Trees in the Field.